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ABC News Hauls Down "Loose Nukes" Discussion Board

By Eric McErlain

After taking a relentless pounding for their reporting in their "Loose Nukes on Main Street" series, ABC News has erased the discussion forum associated with it from abcnews.com. As of right now, a visit to the forum leads to a page that says: "This forum does not exist." It was just a week ago today that we reported that other readers in the forum were discovering that some of their posts were being erased.

Looks like "free speech for me, but not for thee," is the news of the day. More later, as this develops.

Thanks to Joseph Talnagi at Ohio State University for the heads up.

UPDATE: I can also confirm that all of the messages that I posted to the "Loose Nukes" forum have been erased. However, I have started another discussion string in John Stossel's forum asking ABC News why they erased "Loose Nukes." Feel free to join in.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I've also added another discussion string in the Primetime Live discussion board. Thanks to Ryan Meyer at the University of Missouri for the suggestion.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Posters on the message board connected with Primetime Live are now reporting that their messages are being erased:
Postings that have given all too effective a rebuttal of ABC's shoddy and irresponsible Loose Nukes stories are now being shoved down the Memory Hole. ABC's forum managers should be ashamed of themselves. Do you want to become the next CBS?
And here's another challenge from an angry forum participant:
I don't think they were expecting the research reactor community to challenge them so strongly. ABC probably isn't used to being challenged on their own turf, so they took their ball and went home. They were big and brave when they had the stage to themselves on the one hour prime time format, but when they started taking some flak, they pulled the plug.

My guess is that they'll come up with some weak, lame excuse, like "our interns felt threatened by some of those responses". Well, if so, all I can say is, if you're gonna dish it out, you'd better have the guts to stand up and take your lumps. A valuable life lesson for the kids to learn.
Indeed, all too valauble.

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Comments

Anonymous said…
If the discussion forums were presented as web pages, I'll bet that Google or Yahoo has them cached prior to being "edited" by ABC. They'd be easy to retrieve...

It would be sweet to have a posting of what ABC doesn't want seen.

The MSM guys still think they control the game by closing down their distribution channels. Very silly.
October 19, 2005 at 1:49 AM
Stewart Peterson said…
If you want an open and free nuclear energy forum, see:
http://s12.invisionfree.com/NIOF/index.php?showtopic=31
October 19, 2005 at 9:32 AM
Stewart Peterson said…
Perhaps I should clarify that comment a bit.

I've created a thread at the Nuclear is Our Future discussion board about this. It will most certainly not be censored.

Sorry if that sounded like spam.
October 19, 2005 at 9:39 AM
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